Originating from the word "owned", the word later took on the 1337 variation 0wn3d. Because this was primarily used as a cry of victory or supremacy in first person shooter games online, typos occured, the most common involved missing the "o" key and hitting the "p" key. This stuck, leaving us with the words pwn, pwn4g3, and pwn3d

The act of being badly defeated at video games or various sports. The term originally derived from the "1337" language which was created by nerds who were good at video games and nothing else. The term was then brought off the internet and various online games and into the light of the outside world where normal people picked up on the new word and started to use it. This term is now used across the United States and other English speaking nations. The word was first owned, then turned to own3d by a minorly clever gamer, and then turned to pwn3d with the accidental pressing over the P key instead of the O key as a result of typing too fast.

A intended mispelling in leet speak, originally coming from having root access to a UNIX operating system such as if it were your computer you would own it, but by means of exploiting a hole in their system, you gain full control of their system, and in essence own it, or should I say 'pwn' it. If you are a victim of such an escapade you would be considered 'pwn3d'. This has been taken out of context as you can see over the years buy wannabe "hackers" and children with nothing more to do than try to act `leet`.

"Yeah, he was running a vulnerable finger daemon and I pwn3d his ass with a simple buffer overflow"